Grafting Success

A friend of mine had a wild plum of some kind which neither flowered nor fruited. I grafted Flavor King on his tree a year ago and forgot (so did he). I had an epiphany this January and topped off the tree. The graft was alive without any care and in total shade. It is now exploding in growth! I’m just now starting my orchard in my new(er) house.

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Which varieties are you going to plant? How big is the planting area of your yard?

Very nice! Glad to see it is making it :+1:

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My house sits on about 11,000 sq feet but it is a corner lot and I lose a lot of space because of its orientation.

I plan to plant 4 fruit trees in this side of the backyard.

Half of my backyard has a steep slope. I’ll put in four 4’X8’ vegetable boxes up against the wall and about 5 fruit trees uphill.

The front yard is a mess but I think I can squeeze in 4 more fruit trees there. This part is not visible from the front door so wife approves my plan!

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Good planning Vinod, best of luck! Your yard looks very nice by the way…

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I had to take out a dying mature peach where I grafted your Arctic Jay and Honey Blaze. I grafted them on some puny Lovell seedlings

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Looks great Vinod :+1: Hope you have much success in the new home!

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One of my pear grafts is started to bust out!

And another coming along as well

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where did you get Lovell seedlings?

Burntridge nursery

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Life. Death. Renewal. Our young Karmijn de Sonnaville broke off last summer, but I salvaged some scionwood and grafted two buds on a G11 rootstock. This spring the buds emerged into beautiful young leaves.

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I was lucky enough that I saw when one of the local nursery guys posted his leftover root stocks from his grafting class! I bought and grafted 15 trees! This is Alaska so they are still taking their sweet time waking up.

I figure I would do a bunch for the practice and to account for failures. If even half of them make it I’m going to have to scramble :smiley:

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Some of this year’s successful grafts.

Wayne


Swayzie

Swayzie

Peck’s Pleasant

Peck’s Pleasant

I’m particularly happy about the Peck’s. It’s been a struggle. My first attempt to acquire one was to order from a nursery that listed it in its catalog. The order came back with the Peck’s order unfilled with note that it was not available that year. It never showed up in the catalog again. A year or so later I got scionwood from GRIN, but my grafting attempt failed. I tried again from GRIN and succeeded, but spongy moths destroyed the tree when it only had two leaves. I tried a couple years from another source, but the scionwood was very thin, and though I saw green, the green never turned into leaves. I tried GRIN again, but was told it was no longer available (victim of fireblight, it appears). Finally, this winter I received sticks as a special order from Fedco. It wasn’t in the catalog, but I knew they maintained the orchard collection formerly available at the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill and made an inquiry last fall. Finally this spring I’m tasting success. Now if I can keep any of the four successfully grafted Peck’s Pleasant trees alive, I will have achieved my dream goal. It only became a dream goal after so many failed attempts.

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I was able to get 3 grafts out of the Peck Pleasant and all 3 are doing well.

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